sfcrazy writes: The year 2012 has not been very good for Canonical and Ubuntu. The end of the year saw harsh criticism of Ubuntu from bodies like EFF and FSF which accused the operating system of 'data leak', 'privacy invasion' and adding 'spyware' features. Now, Gnome Shell is also getting online shopping lens. Alen Bell has created a Gnome Shell extension which allows a user to conduct online shopping search right from Gnome's Dash. You can install the extension from this link. Once installed you can start searching for online shopping by hitting 'super' key and then enter your search term. One of the greatest differences between the implementations is who is in control. Gnome's Shopping lens shows how it should have been done in the first place as it puts the user in control and not the company whose OS you are using. Bell has explained it very well on his blog.

On the extension page, there is a settings option which allows a user to choose the shopper he/she wants to use. Not only that if I want to choose Amazon, I can also choose the Amazom for my region by simply changing the domain. Bell has explained the usage clearly on his blog, maintaing complete transparecny about the project unlike the Unity shopping lens.